Occurrence of Innocent Adventitious Cardiac Sounds in Childhood

A group of 500 children between the ages of 2 and 12 years was subjected to a special cardiac examination. Of these, 234 (46.8%) were found to have functional cardiac murmurs and 137 (27.4%) were found to have extra cardiac sounds. There was a considerable degree of association between the occurrence of these two types of adventitious sounds. Neither, however, was found to be correlated with the degree of anemia present, the age, color, sex, state of nutrition, or the temperature of the subjects examined. A strong association was found to exist between the quality of many functional cardiac murmurs and their point of maximal intensity over the precordium, those in the midprecordium being commonly of the vibratory type and those in the pulmonic region of the blowing variety. The most valuable criteria for the differentiation of functional from organic heart murmurs in childhood are the acoustic quality and the point of maximal intensity of the murmur.